On Around the World this week there’s Latin music from Slovakia, we’ll hear from Iraq, Jamaica, Mali, Bosnia, Japan, Brazil, England, Scotland, Wales, Denmark and Cyprus. Our featured album this week comes from a band who formed in Tennessee, at a whiskey distillery.
Listen to last week’s show and see the running order on DavySims.com and find out more about the show. You can also listen to Part 1 and Part 2 on Mixcloud.
Hear the show on the web on Sundays at 10:00 pm to midnight:
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And on Tuesdays at 7:00 pm on the radio and web
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Album of the Week
This may be the first Bluegrass album has featured on the show – I blame Kevin in Minnesota for introducing me to the new stuff – and I am sure it’s the first by a band that have played the Grand Ole Opry.
The Po' Ramblin' Boys are a bluegrass band from east Tennessee. Here’s a question for the pedantic (like me, I suppose). Must Bluegrass music come from Kentucky … if music is from east Tennessee is it “Appalachian” music? Well, no, according to Wikipedia, “Bluegrass music is a genre of American roots music that developed in the 1940s in the Appalachian region of the United States. The genre derives its name from the band Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys.”
The band are from Smoky Mountains region of East Tennessee. They were formed in 2014 by CJ Lewandowski. He was working at Ole Smoky Moonshine Distillery in Sevierville, TN. The distillery is something of a tourist attraction and it employed musicians to play for visitors seven days a week.
Lewandowski, a mandolin player was hired to fill-in when the musicians who were booked didn’t show. That led to the distillery and he agreeing to form a band to play fulltime. Another employee – who was working in the tasting rooms and other friends came together to form the band.
The four played several times a week for a year and half. And In 2020, they added Laura Orshaw, a fiddle player and singer joined the band. There’s more here.
Maliba is the new album from Fatumata Diawara. The Malian singer has recorded with Bobby Womack and Herbie Hancock. She has played Glastonbury and other major festivals, and toured with the Cuban pianist Roberto Fonseca. She assembled a West African “super-group” featuring Amadou and Mariam, Oumou Sangaré and Toumani Diabaté to record a song calling for peace in her troubled homeland. She was involved with Damon Albarn’s star-studded Africa Express, which culminated in her sharing a stage with Paul McCartney. More recently she shared the stage at New York’s legendary Carnegie Hall with the likes of David Crosby and Snarky Puppy in an evening of topical protest songs.
In a parallel career she is an actor, including an acclaimed appearance in 2014’s Timbuktu (Le chagrin des oiseaux), which received both BAFTA and Academy Award nominations.
Mitsune is an all-female shamisen trio based in Berlin, with members from Japan, Australia & Germany. Joined by a rhythm section of percussion and double bass, Mitsune mixes Japanese folk songs with eastern blues, jazz, rock and cinematic music influences.
From RootsWorld: “Calabria, home to Ettore Castagna, is the toe in the boot of Italy. It’s a place that’s been buffeted by influences from all around the Mediterranean over many, many centuries. You can hear strong hints of that history in the music here; bits of Greece and North Africa, along with that dry, dusty sound that typifies the entire south of Italy. It makes for a heady rhythmic and often hypnotic combination, one that multi-instrumentalist Castagna gleefully explores.”
Other music on the show from Bruno Morais, Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita, Divanhana, Djeli Moussa Diawara, Dowdelin, Jupiter & Okwess, La3no Cubano, LYRE LYRE, Magalí Sare, Maya Youssef, Mitsune, Monsieur Doumani, Natik Awayez, Oysterband, Pascuala Ilabaca y Fauna, ROSALÍA, Talisk, The Carey James and Tone Of Voice Orchestra